Having missed Jason Isbell when he visited New Zealand 4 years ago, I didn’t want to miss out this time, especially with our Nadia Reid opening as a stellar bonus – at The Powerstation venue, 27 Mar 2018.
Isbell’s work now is billed with his band as ‘Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit‘.
Now a multi-Grammy winning artist, Alabama-born Jason Isbell was a guitarist first Continue reading
Moving Coil cartridge design has not changed fundamentally for 30+ years.
The traditional design of almost all MC cartridges, consists of a stylus on the end of a long cantilever, with a ‘moving coil’ attached to the inner end.
This whole assembly ‘sits’ onto a soft, resilient ”suspension’ or damper’ material and held in place by a rear tension wire. Continue reading
This ‘integrated’ single-ended 300B kit amp was introduced by Audio Note UK in the mid 1990s. This example was built by me in 1997.
The standard Kit One looks plain and unattractive, so I dressed it up with some Kondo-copper aesthetic!
Not inexpensive (around GBP799 in 1997), this was however a quite good sounding 300B SE amp. Continue reading
The McIntosh MR71 vacuum tube FM stereo tuner was in production from 1963 to 1969 and retailed for US$399. (Today a good MR71 can still command a price 5 times that!)
The MR71 was the last tube tuner made by McIntosh and, together with the earlier MR67 model, is regarded as the best tube tuner that McIntosh made. Continue reading
This Japanese single-ended, vacuum tube amplifier can be purchased in ‘kit’ form or fully assembled.
Power output is 3.5 watts/channel. Supplied with Russian Sovtek tubes – 2A3 (2), 6SN7 (2), 5U4G (1). Amplifier weight is 16 kgs.
Input Sensitivity is high (150mV), so with the in-built volume controls, this amplifier will accept Line level sources easily. Continue reading
Peruvians are known for their genial warmth and hospitality.
Peru today has a mixed population but is still predominantly ‘Amerindian’ (indigenous American indians). There are many ‘mestizos’ (mixed Amerindian-Spanish/European) but less so in the Andean highlands, away from the capital, Lima. And also a significant Asian (Japanese, Chinese) population or mixed ethnicity. Continue reading
When I first listened to DACs, I concluded quite quickly that ‘multi-bit’ DACs sounded more like music to me, than ‘bitstream’ DACs – more dynamic & ‘alive’.
The TDA1541 was originally developed by Philips (in 1985) as a high performance stereo DAC. The ‘A’ version was manufactured between 1989-1995. It was (is still?) regarded as one of the best sounding DACs ever made. This chip was used in almost 100 different CD players Continue reading
